Terrific question! And no, I may not have written directly about this. Yes, it applies to folks living in the lay state and/or lay vocations. Remember these are people who have been initiated through baptism (and other Sacraments of initiation) into membership in the People of God and thus, it also means people with all the rights and obligations of lay persons in the Church. You and any other lay person lives your vocation in the name of the Church: you are a Catholic lay person and the right to call yourself this is a significant right all by itself. It also comes with obligations.
(Assuming you are a baptized Catholic) everything you are and do is meant to be done in the name of your Catholic identity. You may teach or nurse or do medicine, you may be a business leader, a CEO, a housewife, or shipbuilder, student, caregiver, etc. As a Catholic lay person (or "just" as a Catholic) you are entirely free to live your faith and thus be a Catholic lay person in an infinite number of ways. You never stop being a person who lives your Christian faith in the name of the Church --- unless of course you reject and walk away from this identity in some material way. Not everything you do may reflect well on your calling or on the Name in which you are called to live your life but the call is still yours. By the way, one tricky piece here is that you are not a Catholic shipbuilder, or a Catholic CEO. The Church has not commissioned you to do or be these specific things in her name. Even so, you are a Catholic Lay Person and CEO, or Catholic and shipbuilder, etc. You are free to make as much money as you can (though the evangelical counsel of poverty is also an obligation which is part of your Catholic vocation), free to marry, to raise a family, to move wherever you like, study whatever you want, and so forth (though in all of this the evangelical counsels of obedience and chastity also bind you --- though not religious obedience or religious chastity in celibacy).
You have the right (and sometimes the obligation!) to receive the sacraments regularly, to keep the precepts of the Church, to participate in a parish or other faith community, to participate as you feel called in all of the forms of lay ministry the church opens to you. If you are trained and commissioned as an EEM you do this in the name of the church. You are a Catholic EEM. You have the obligation to be knowledgeable about your faith, to inculcate the theological and cardinal virtues (etc.), to live the law of the Church and of God's Law of Love, to become a person of prayer (the very prayer of God), to raise your children in a similar way, to create a home which is genuinely Catholic and reflects Catholic faith and values. You are free to associate with others and create associations of the lay faithful. In serious or emergency situations you are even free to baptize! These are also rights which are yours as a person in the lay state. Moreover, you have the right and obligation to discern the shape of God's call in your life and to live this out the best you can. This vocation is the foundation of every other in the Church. At every moment and mood of your life you have the right and obligation to hear and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a Catholic in the Lay state.
When people say "I am a Catholic" all of this and more is implied --- or at least is meant to be implied. Above all, I think, to say, "I am a Catholic" is to recognize and embrace a call to holiness in Christ, to recognize and embrace a call to be God's embodied Word as you image Christ in this unique and foundational state of life. Because you are baptized, confirmed, and nourished with the Eucharist and the Word of God, strengthened as needed with the Sacrament of the Sick, healed and reconciled with the Sacrament of reconciliation, you are called and commissioned to live this state of life in an inspired and edifying way. Here rights and obligations become hard or impossible to tease apart but they are all part of your unique vocation as a Catholic and as Catholic Laity.
Similarly, you may be a gifted preacher, knowledgeable in the Word of God and human psychology, but unless and until the Church grants you the right (and charges you with the associated obligations), you cannot call yourself a Catholic preacher. (You would be a Catholic and a preacher, but you do not preach in the name of the Church; she has not granted this ecclesial calling, rights, and commensurate obligations to you). You may pray and live in all the ways a Catholic Religious prays, but you do so in the lay state (and why not?!); you are not a Catholic religious unless and until you are initiated by competent authorities into this state of life. Such rights and obligations belong to the Church (we call these callings, "ecclesial vocations") and they are hers alone to confer; they are never self-assumed.
But the more pertinent point in light of your question is the truth that by the very fact of your Baptism you live lay life in the name of the Church. The Church recognizes you as part of the People of God, the (Gk.,λαος laos,laity, or People), and that is a very significant vocation wherever and how ever you live it out or express it; for wherever and how ever you do this, you are called to be Church. You are (a) Catholic; your selfhood is lived in the name of God and the name of the Church. The challenge, of course, is always to live this vocation worthily in a way which builds up the People, to understand that with baptism you did not simply join a religious group but were gifted with and embraced a Catholic vocation marked by its undeniable call to an exhaustive (if difficult!) holiness-in-community, and very unique (and challenging!) freedom.
.jpg)
Posts
